Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) has acquired a majority stake in energy firm EDF’s data center and cloud subsidiary, Exaion.

The crypto company and EDF Pulse Ventures, the corporate venture of EDF, this week announced the signing of an investment agreement allowing MARA to acquire a 64 percent stake in Exaion.

MARA would invest approximately $168 million in cash upfront to acquire a 64 percent stake in Exaion, with the opportunity to invest another approximately $127 million to acquire an additional 11 percent of Exaion by 2027. EDF will remain a client of Exaion and retain a minority interest. The transaction is expected to close in or around Q4 2025.

The companies said Exaion will transition to a larger-scale international commercial deployment. Through the deal, MARA said it expects to expand its capabilities into AI/HPC infrastructure development and meet demand for cloud solutions.

Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier is serving as legal advisor to MARA. Stifel Financial Corp. is serving as financial advisor, and Coblence avocats is serving as legal advisor, to Exaion. Ashurst is serving as legal advisor to EDF Pulse Ventures.

MARA is one of the biggest Bitcoin miners in the US, predominantly utilizing stranded energy assets to power modular mining units. In April, the company fully energized a 25MW modular cryptomine data center powered by flared natural gas in Texas and North Dakota. Last December, the company acquired an onshore wind farm with plans to develop and operate a Bitcoin mining operation on the site, powered behind-the-meter.

Founded in 2020, Exaion launched its first data center in Sherbrooke, Canada, last year. Spanning 4,000 sq ft (372 sqm), the Tier II quality facility offers 780kW of capacity. The site is home to a quantum computer from Quandela.

Exaion was launched to offer Web3 (i.e. blockchain) based services from distributed data centers powered by renewable energy. The company launched a Node-as-a-Service platform back in 2022, utilizing EDF Group's data centers in Normandy.

On its website, Exaion says it operates 1,250 GPUs and four data centers. It build-outs private cloud environments for customers in its own facilities or customer data centers and offers compute services.